The National Post reports in its Friday edition that NASA's two stuck astronauts took their first spacewalk together Thursday, exiting the International Space Station almost eight months after moving in. An Associated Press dispatch to the Post says that Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore removed a broken antenna and wiped the station's exterior for evidence of any microbes that might still be alive after launching from Earth and escaping through vents. After some initial trouble unbolting the bulky antenna, the astronauts finally pried it off nearly four hours after departing the hatch. Mission Control urged them to watch for any floating parts from the antenna removal. During the job 420 kilometres up, Ms. Williams set a new spacewalking record for female astronauts. The pair expected to stay just a week when they arrived at the space station last June. However, their new ride, Boeing's Starliner capsule, encountered so much trouble that NASA decided to return it empty. That left the two test pilots, both retired Navy captains, in orbit until SpaceX can bring them home. That will not happen until late March or early April, extending their mission to 10 months because of a Spacex delay in launching their replacements.